It's All Relative

Sorry, the Patterson in me couldn't let the opportunity escape for a bad pun. In other news, I met my host family today! They are absolutely wonderful, and I already feel blessed to have them in my life.

"But wait," you say. "Bekah, you live in an apartment. Why do you need a host family? Are you moving?"

No, I'm not. But, as it turns out, living situation has very little to do with the idea of a host family. Fulbright connects every ETA here in Taiwan with a host family to serve as, well, a family, someone to spend holidays and go see the country with, much as a grown child might do with their biological family. They give us another person to turn to if we're stumped with what's going on around us. And, of course, the added benefit is that of cultural exchange: they teach me Taiwanese culture, and I teach them American culture. Saying that since I live on my own I don't need a host family is roughly equivalent to advocating dumping your biological family once you're self-sufficient: even if you don't live with them, you still need a family!

We went to Banana Pier for the official family-meeting-reception, and got there just as the sun went down. It was gorgeous.

Yes. Unedited.

(...and oh yeah, this happened...)

And, once inside, we got to meet our families and have a delicious meal! My family consists of Margaret, an English teacher in Kaohsiung who has had an ETA before and who reminds me somewhat in her looks and mannerisms of my Aunt Marlene; her husband James, who smiles constantly and is keen to teach me Chinese and show me around his hometown of Meinong (so excited--gorgeous place!); and Emily, their daughter, who is a sophomore in college studying English, and with whom I have quite a lot in common. They're fantastic!

Seriously though , US family, doesn't she look like a Lindstrand?

 Other highlights of the night included everyone being forced to give impromptu 2-minute introductions of themselves, which were occasionally adorable..

Karina's family's son introducing them in Taiwanese--SO cute

...but more often slightly awkward. And then there was 'fun time,' which involved the ETAs writing their answers to a series of questions and seeing if the new host families could guess. In the first round of six questions, we got zero right, giving us the ignominious position of last place. We rallied in the second round, pulling out with four matches (one of which was obtained by kind of cheating...), but were still consigned to the bottom of the stack. We didn't care, though--it was just funny. Also, we're pretty sure that Andrew, who got 100%, cheated more than a little to get there.

By the end of the evening, my cheek muscles were aching from too much smiling, and I was 100% optimistic about the coming year, as James and Margaret want to show me around and Emily told me she's excited to have a traveling buddy around her age. I could not have picked a better host family! There's nothing better than when things just click.

And that's been happening in other areas of my life lately, too.

My colleagues at Han-Min and I had a great week; one of the great things about Han-Min is that, because it's a big school, the subject teachers all share an office. This means that, at every break, I am surrounded by my LETs and a third English teacher, Fiona, with whom to chat and hang out. And they're fantastic--as of today, we're planning to go see an Alphonse Mucha art exhibit sometime in the next few weeks. I'm not going to lie, I hadn't heard of Alphonse Mucha before today, but I'm excited to go see his works if only for the fantastic company!

Another moment of adorable clicking today: one of my students, Peggy, saw me studying Chinese and took it upon herself to come in on all of her recesses to help me, pointing to different words and having me repeat them after her, correcting my characters as I wrote them on flashcards, and then, in the last recess, bringing in flashcards of her own that she'd made for me during her last class. So. Cute. A little annoying when I was trying to work quickly, but the thought did not go unappreciated.

Incidentally, Peggy also made me this card for Teachers' Day:

Human connection is just so wonderful when it falls into place, and you don't realize how little of it you have at first when you move to another country where you don't speak the language. But today, in three separate instances, it fell into place, and reminded me of the joys it can offer. It's not a full-blown web of support, but it's a great group of colleagues, students, and now a family, and in a city where I used to know no one--it's all relative.